DIY Photography, But DIY Right: Mastering the Art of Visual Storytelling for Your Business
- David Hayden
- Jul 6
- 9 min read
YES! You Can Produce Quality Photography Doing It Yourself!
As discussed in the previous article, there may be a conflict between cashflow needs and your business needs for compelling imagery. You may need or just want to set the business management aside for a while and do your own photography. That’s a great start. Having produced your own photography puts you in a much better position to guide others to create the results you need.
Spoiler alert, future articles will discuss how to manage the friend/relative photographer as well as engaging a skilled professional.
Did You Do Your Homework?
Most often, especially in these situations, the best photographs come from planning, previsualization, and shooting intentionally. The homework in the first article of this series was to prepare your mind and develop an internal sense or image of the story you want to tell. The story of what makes your product of service special.
Once you have a concept shot in mind it’s time to think about the set, product placement, arrangement of items that support your product story. The hero (your product) and any supporting characters must be arranged in such a way that it is clear which item is the hero.
To truly master this visual storytelling, delving deeper into the art of composition can make all the difference. While these articles will give you practical tips, dedicated resources offer invaluable insights. Here are a couple highly recommended books that can significantly elevate your understanding of how to arrange elements for maximum impact:
"The Photographer's Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos" by Michael Freeman: This classic breaks down complex compositional theories into understandable concepts, showing how to effectively communicate through visual design.
"Learning to See Creatively: Design, Color, and Composition in Photography" by Bryan Peterson: Known for its accessible style, this book will challenge you to look beyond the obvious and discover compelling compositions in everyday scenes.
Clean Up Your Act.
Certainly, my goal and the goal of like-minded professionals is to provide imagery that strengthens your brand and elevates desire for your product or service. This should be your goal as well. Therefore, as photographers, and I am including you in this group, we must first address some basics:
Make sure your product is pristine. There should be little to no dust, smears, or fingerprints. The labels, if any, must be straight undamaged. The same for the entire set, cleanliness is key, food must be fresh and styled. If you or a staff member are the product (subjects for headshots) Clothes need to be clean and pressed to perfection and non-distracting. Potential clients don’t care if you look great in your retro paisley shirt. They want to see a person that inspires confidence, trust, competence and so on.
Cameras are unforgiving and capture everything, dust for example can show up in excruciating detail.
Remove all distractions. There is a “rule” in commercial photography that says, everything in the photograph must be there for a reason and that reason is to A) be the hero or B) support the hero. Portraiture is no different, distracting clothing and backgrounds do not support the hero.
Never Put Your Hero in Bad Light
Effective lighting is what separates a compelling photograph from an amateurish snapshot. Not that some snapshots can’t be stunning, but that typically results luck. When photographing yourself, your brand or product, there is no place for luck. The stakes are too high.
Fortunately, for purposes of solid product or portrait shot, the lighting need not be complicated. In fact, simple lighting often yields the best results with less effort. For example, I know food photographers that prefer to only use window light when possible.
The same is true of many portrait photographers, they only shoot in natural light.
Your results may vary. Light is light whether it comes from the sun, the moon, through a window or from studio lights or the light on your cellphone. Regardless of your chosen light source, your job is to carefully observe and control how your arrangement of your subject and light source enhance your subject.
I have written several articles on the properties of light and how understanding them can improve your photography but now is not the time to rehash those ideas. You have a business to run, so I’ll keep it simple.
Embrace the Window Light: This is often your best and cheapest light source. Position your product or subject near a large window, ideally on an overcast day or when the sun isn't directly hitting the window. This provides soft, even illumination that flatters almost anything. The key here is to position your subject so that it looks its absolute best. So, don’t just set the subject on a table near the window and call it done. Move it around, change the angle of view until you find the most pleasing presentation.
Avoid Harsh Overhead or Direct Flash:
The built-in flash on your phone or camera often creates unflattering shadows and reflections. Similarly, direct overhead room lights can flatten your subject. Turn them off and rely on natural window light or diffuse light sources if possible. Keeping the light source simple also has the advantage of simplifying color balance. If, for example you are using window light and it has a blueish cast from the sky but your overhead lights are incandescent for fluorescent, then you are throwing competing / conflicting colors into the scene making it more difficult to get a pleasing representation, and if your product color is important, multi-colored light sources can make it impossible.
Use a Simple Reflector (DIY!):
Most likely when using window light there will be deep shadows and light fall off at the end of your image farthest from the window. Imagine you are shooting a plate of food near a window. The part closest to the window will probably be significantly brighter than the food farthest from the window. This is easily managed. A white poster board, a piece of white foam core, or even a white bed sheet can work wonders. Place it opposite your light source to bounce light back onto your subject, filling in shadows and making your product pop with even illumination. Again, experimentation is key.
Move the reflector around as you observe its effect on your subject. Pick the location that best suits your intent. Don’t be surprised if you have to move the reflector so close it encroaches on the scene, something you’ll have to address in post-processing.
Watch for Undesired Reflections: If your product is a shiny bottle, glassware, a china cabinet with glass doors, or even a person wearing glasses, you have your work cut out for you. Shiny surfaces, particularly curved ones, reflect everything. They will reflect you taking the picture, the cactus in the corner of the room, the white apron on your chef in the background. When photographing shiny objects you have to aggressively control your environment and your lighting or all the reflections will destroy the quality of your photo. The key to lighting shiny objects is not to light the subject but carefully light what they reflect.
Soft Light is Your Friend: Generally, larger light sources (like a big window, or a light bounced off a large white wall) create softer, more flattering light with less harsh shadows. Small, direct light sources (like a bare bulb or phone flash) create hard, unflattering light. Always aim for soft light for professional-looking results. A very cost-effective way to get soft light is to buy a cheap cloth shower curtain and hang it over the window or make a frame out of wood or PVC pipe upon which to stretch the shower curtain, to create a diffuser. Another inexpensive alternative is to buy a 5 in 1 reflector kit that will not only have reflecting surfaces but also a diffuser through which you filter your source light.
Keep Your Composition Simple.
There are no doubt thousands of books on composition, elements of design, still life and photography and it is definitely worth reviewing a few if you are going to be doing your own photography for a while. One such book is: Light Science & Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting" by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, and Paul Fuqua: While focused on light, this book is paramount for understanding how light shapes composition, creating depth and separating subjects – crucial for high-quality commercial work. Consider it for when you're ready to dive deeper into the technical side that influences how objects are perceived.
One of the goals of any photograph is to keep the viewer’s eye in the frame. This is done by making sure elements in the photograph are not tangent with the edges of the frame leading the viewer’s eye to the edge then out of the frame.
Having minimum distractions in the image allows the viewer’s eye to rest, and if done right, rest on the primary subject.
Here are some basic concepts to keep in mind when doing your own product photography.
Your subject needs to be the obvious hero of the shot. Th achieve that, the product and its labeling needs to be absolutely sharp. If it has a label it needs to be facing the camera and precisely captured, well-lit and readable. The packaging, container, labels and accessories need to have true representative colors. This is especially true for clothing, makeup, and packaging. Note, this can be a fool’s errand for social media and internet posting. Professional photographers have very high-quality monitors and calibrate them for color and tonal accuracy. However, the viewers of the photos most likely do not have calibrated monitors nor do they realize what a difference it makes. So, your picture of a perfectly white shirt may appear blue, green, red, yellow, grey, or any combination of the above to the person viewing it on their device.
Keep your composition simple with minor supporting elements that do not compete for attention but bring attention or value to your subject. This can be done by placement, complimentary or contrasting colors being slightly out of focus compared with the subject. Think about the arrangement of supporting elements in such a way that they lead the viewer’s eye directly to the primary subject.
Odd numbers are typically more interesting than even numbers of objects.
Supporting elements can frame the primary subject encouraging the viewers to find and rest on the primary subject.
If your photo has a horizon line be very careful where you place it. If it falls dead center in the middle of your product it is not only uninteresting but provides an easy pathway for the viewer’s eye to exit the frame. Particularly if your product has an interesting shape, you want to make sure if there is a horizon line, that it accentuates and draws attention to the unique shape of your product. Also, if there is a horizon line, it must be level unless it you intentionally tilt it for artistic purposes (not common in product photography). Sloppy horizon lines are amateurish and scream to a lack of attention to detail.
For many purposes it is advisable to purchase a roll of seamless paper. This allows you to create an image without a horizon line and with practice you can light it in away to create nice gradients.
Control your contrast. Light you set is such a way that brighter backgrounds are behind darker elements and vice versa. For example, if you use a white poster board for a background if it tilts away from the product and light source you will get a gradient from lighter to darker that can be very attractive.
Pay very close attention to the edges of your subject. If the subject has dark edges, you can add white cards on the sides to add some light to highlight the edges to add dimension so the product stands out. Conversely a light subject on a light background might need some flags (dark cards) on the sides to cut the light at the edges of the subject allowing them to separate from the background.
What I’ve covered here are some rudimentary concepts in product photography but if you apply them as appropriate you will elevate your photography and give your product the proper treatment it needs to stand out.
Do not break down your set up just yet. It often happens that the preview you see on your phone or the back of your camera is deceivingly good. When you pull the images up on your computer you may find flaws that can only be corrected by adjusting your set and lighting and reshooting the product. In the next article I will be discussing the importance of editing your photos to bring out the very best of your product images.
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